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Can We Truly Forget The Past?

In the last chapter Toni Morrison's novel Beloved insists that “it was not a story to pass on” (Morrison 323). In addition to this repeated phrase the final chapter states, “So they forgot her. Like an unpleasant dream during a troubling sleep” (Morrison 324). However I find it hard to believe that anyone, especially Sethe, managed to utterly forget Beloved simply because she told herself it was not something that should be passed on.  Throughout the book memory and rememory come up as a central theme. At one point Sethe even says, herself, that “nothing ever dies” (Morrison 43). This statement proved true throughout the narrative in that Beloved, a ghost baby, remained forever present in the personality of the 124 house. Her persistence in the life of Sethe and Denver represents the fact that no matter what happens in the future (for example the potential of living a full and happy life in a family with Paul D.) the past still alters the present. This fact not only haunts the psyc...
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The Meaning of Life According to The Stranger

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Image found here . I think one important message of The Stranger is that a universal meaning of life does not exist, despite people's attempts to create one. Conversely, it is up to everyone to explore what makes life meaningful to them or if they need a reason to find life meaningful at all. Throughout the novel people in Meursault’s life try to force their conventional views on meaning onto him, but he simply does not need their explanations to enjoy his life. Everyone from the funeral caretaker, his boss, Marie, the court, to the chaplain need Meursault to validate their life views, but Meursault does not see the point in wasting time on peoples’ opinions that have little to do with him.  For Meursault meaning can not be imposed from the outside, but must be a continuous internal experience. A few examples of Meursault’s independence from other social conventions include his refusal to see his Maman in the casket, “‘You don’t want to?’, I answered, ‘No.’” (Camus 6). When he r...
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Jake's Conflicting Views on Boxing

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Image of a man boxing a bull.( https://www.freeimages.com/premium-vector/man-boxing-bull-2850106 )  The Sun Also Rises opens with a long description of Cohn’s boxing ability, which Jake presents as unimpressive and even demeaning. However, the reason for this long explanation of boxing is unclear until much later in the book. Jake's need to exude masculinity causes him to go on long tangents of traditionally male activities, like fishing, cycling races, and crucially bullfighting. In part these digressions serve to distract Jake from his suppressed feelings about his life and injury, but what I find most interesting is Jake’s conflicting opinions about boxing.  When Cohn boxes Jake belittles him for it. He even says, “I never met anyone of his class who remembered him. They did not even remember that he was a middleweight boxing champion” (1). Cohn was not part of the lost generation whose lives were forever altered by the war. Instead of battling in real world combat, he foug...
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The Use of Time and Big Ben in Mrs. Dalloway

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Image of the Big Ben clock tower found  here. (https://youtu.be/TVLYtiunWJA?si=Ga23qLzvGvIYx6cb) Throughout Mrs. Dalloway Big Ben chimes seventeen times (at least according to my count), and yet we have not had a chance to talk about it in class. I think Virginia Woolf’s choice to explicitly point out the time every so many pages, is interesting as the book feels nonlinear and somewhat timeless in its narration. The structure of the book itself plays into this feeling of timelessness as there are no chapter breaks, and it often leaps into different characters' consciousness who all experience time differently as they reminisce over the past, sit in the present, or dream of the future. I think we especially see this difference in passage of time when comparing Clarissa and Septimus. For example, in the first section, Clarissa reflects on the time she has spent in Westminster: “For having lived in Westminster – how many years now? over twenty, – one feels even in the midst of the t...
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What Makes The Mezzanine's Writing Style Unique?

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  Image of a man riding an escalator. Found here and cited below. In class we have established that Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine hosts unique prose, but what exactly about his writing style is so distinctive that we must question its viability as a novel? While there are many eccentricities in his book, I think his unusual use of plot, theme, descriptions, footnotes, and thought quantification makes his writing so unparalleled. One of Baker’s most distinctive stylistic choices is his use of footnotes. These are not mere annotations but integral parts of the narrative that expand on and complicate the text. For example, Howie takes three pages worth of footnotes to reflect on grooves in escalators, ice skates, and record players before returning back to trends in shoe laces (Baker 66-68). His use of footnotes represent the nonlinear digression of thoughts in a way no other book has before him. Speaking of, Baker's use of footnotes contributes to a non-traditional plot. While ...
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